


In Spite of Herself

by thinlizzy2



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, POV Female Character, Teen Years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:47:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinlizzy2/pseuds/thinlizzy2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As much as she tries to deny it, April's life is actually pretty awesome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Spite of Herself

**Author's Note:**

  * For [implicated2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/implicated2/gifts).



_Childhood_

 

Mrs. Ludgate cannot figure her oldest daughter out. 

She's told April a million times that if she's going to borrow Natalie's toys then she needs to play nicely with them. But all of Natalie's Barbies have bright red nail polish slashes across their throats now, and her My Little Ponies have had their eyes gouged out.

She's lectured her daughter about playing nicely with the neighbourhood children, but Cynthia Nichols has developed a very specific phobia of little dark-haired girls with bangs and Mrs. Coleman next door tells her that Jimmy started wetting the bed again after April invited him over to play house.

She hasn't told April not to touch the stove or stick forks in the electrical socket. She's far too nervous about what might happen and they can't afford another trip to the emergency room.

She's proud, however, of a stroke of genius that comes to her one Easter. She hands April her basket and tells her to make sure to eat all of her creme eggs and chocolate bunnies and marshmallow peeps _at once_ , no matter how much they make her tummy hurt. Then she goes to watch her soaps, content in the knowledge that her daughter will now definitely limit her candy consumption to one piece a day.

Twenty minutes later, April is barrelling down the stairs at full speed, with a face smeared with chocolate and a manic sugar gleam in her eyes.

She's eight years old and naughty, after all. She's not stupid.

 

_Freshman_

 

April Ludgate, at fourteen, pushes open the doors to the oh-so-creatively named Pawnee High School and then almost instantly regrets it. 

The noise is too much, too full of giggles and veiled insults and truths that people aren't saying. The colours are weird too, like someone's added an extra layer of white to the scene; everything looks too bright and yet washed out at the same time. She can feel eyes on her, openly appraising - _little goth freak, no tits, why is she dressed like that?_ \- and it only takes her about five minutes to decide this is definitely not worth it. 

She slips under the stairs, waits for the bell and then she's out, through the doors and across the parking lot, down the slope towards downtown. She knows it's only a matter of time before someone catches her and makes her go back, though if that time is hours, days or months she has no idea. But she's definitely already in trouble anyway, so it doesn't matter if she steals a couple of packs of cigarettes and then spends the day punishing people for buying those obnoxious custom plates for their cars.

By the time the school finally gets around to calling her mother, April's already been absent for ten days and has begun a rather impressive collection of hood ornaments. She plays with them - little statuette dude, pretentious BMW symbol, horse running with the wind in its mane - while her mother yells and Natalie smirks in the hallway, not even bothering to disguise her glee at the fact that her sister is in trouble again. April counts to a thousand in her head twice, first in English and then in Spanish, and then decides to move things along.

"All right; I get it! No doubt I'm already hopelessly behind my peer group in both acrostic poetry writing _and_ calculating angles, and will clearly never make my living as an angle-measuring poet. That should be punishment enough, but judging by the look on your face it's not so just hit me with it, okay? What's the damage?"

It turns out she's been suspended from school. For a week. And if she keeps this up, next time it might be two.

April gives one of her rare genuine smiles and decides that high school might not be so bad after all.

 

_Sophmore_

 

At fifteen, April enrols in an art class. 

It's not because she 'Appreciates Creativity and Self-Expression', as her guidance counsellor clearly wants to believe. Or that she's 'Coming Out of her Shell', as she heard her mother tell her aunt on the phone one night. It's not even that she's 'A Massive Pretentious Douche', which is Natalie's pet theory.

It's that if she doesn't fill up her third period spare, there's a really good chance she's going to get assigned to track and field and if that happens she might as well just give up on self respect all together.

Not that art is much better. Maybe in New York or London, art classes are full of interesting people with opinions about things like politics or music or... actually, never mind. That sounds just as horrible as this group of losers who flit around painting pictures of fluffy white unicorns or flipping out just because April helped them accessorise by putting paint in their hair.

April's suggestion to do some nudes of Sexy Troy who works in the cafeteria got her sent to the office, so she's painting fruit for the ninety-seventh time this semester. She adds nipples to the apple and a pink mushroomy head to the banana.

"Fascinating interpretation."

It's that new kid, Oren, who joined the class last week. She remembers hearing someone say that he has a human skull in his locker, and she wants to see it _just_ enough not to flip him off for speaking within her earshot. "It's a statement. About the way life renews itself in cycles. Also, penises."

He nods gravely. "Want to see mine?" He turn his easel around for her.

There are maggots in his withered produce and fruit flies buzzing all around the bowl. 

"It's awesome." And just like that, April's made her first real friend.

 

_Junior_

 

Natalie's started coming home at two o'clock in the morning with hickeys on her neck and without her bra, so April decides she needs a boyfriend. She's not jealous of course, and she's definitely not lonely. It's just that if she's up in her room while Natalie is catching gonorrhea from some loser, then suddenly she's the good sister and that's just not okay.

So for Hallowe'en she puts on her favorite 'Naughty Nun' outfit, and wonders if she'll get lucky enough to meet a guy who appreciates that she's got three of them. She knows it's unlikely though. This is Pawnee; she'll be lucky if she can find someone who doesn't think 'Seriously Horny Dude' is an inspired costume idea.

Letting Oren choose the party was a mistake; she'd forgotten that he's having one of his 'heterosexuality is just sooooooo predictable' months. Yes, it is kind of fun to watch Harry Potter making out with Buzz Lightyear, but she came here with a mission: touch a penis before the end of the night or at least get her first kiss with a promise of penis-touching later. And the fact that every guy here is looking for pretty much the same thing is kind of a problem.

Oren is surrounded by enthusiastic hags almost immediately, and more flock over when he loudly explains that he's trying to embrace all forms of sexuality for his art. April watches until her distaste for the human race reaches critical levels, and then she goes out back for some air and possibly to rethink her life plan.

The two boys embracing on the deck jump apart when she opens the door, and then move back together again when they work out that she's no one interesting. Then one of them laughs. "No way! Babe, check out her costume!"

April squints at them in the dim light. 

A 'Naughty Priest'.

A 'Naughty Rabbi'.

She can't help but laugh too, although she tries to disguise it as a cough. And when one of the boys stretches out a hand to her, she decides to ignore the fact that the other one hasn't even cracked a smile.

She gets home at three o'clock, with scratches all over her torso, two pairs of boxers stuffed into her wimple and a definite sense of victory.

 

_Senior_

 

"You need to get a _job_ , April! Or go to _college_ , April! You can't spend your whole life in your bedroom photoshopping pictures of 80s supermodels so that they look like they have _ebola_ , April!"

She shouts her mimicry of her mother's voice down the stairs, but she knows it's no use. The woman has almost definitely got her headphones on and her 'How Not To Strangle Your Horrible Horrible Daughters' motivational CD cranked up to full volume.

She groans as she pitches the pamphlets into the trash. Has she considered a future with Pawnee Credit Union? No, as a matter of fact she hasn't. She's also never considered eating deep fried spider eggs, but she'll try that before she goes into banking. Would she like to train for an exciting career as a massage therapist in as little as eighteen months? Possibly. And in as little as nineteen months she'll cut off her own hands out of disgust at the people she has to touch for money.

It's not like April doesn't have dreams. But opportunities to become the queen of the penguin colonies of Australia don't come up very often. And if she misses the penguins' call because she's in the sales associate training program at Paunchburger, she'll never forgive herself.  
  
She knows her mother only wants her to get a job so she can start paying rent, anyway. Rent on her crappy bedroom with its total absence of trap doors and its dumb only-one-gay-boyfriend-per-night rule? Please. 

When she finally becomes penguin queen her mother is so not being invited to any of the black and white balls.

She drags the leaflets out of the trash again, takes the Nickelback poster off her dart board and puts the pamphlets up there instead. She flicks a dart at the selection and checks what she's hit. Join the Armed Forces. Fuck no. She tries it again and the fates suggest that she train as a dental hygienist. Screw this - she'll just go with the _last_ thing she hits instead.

In the end, the only option left is the worst one of all: Pawnee Community College. She groans as she collects it. But just as she's about to google what she might earn by donating her eggs to people looking to make a _really_ unique omelet, a blurb on the back cover catches her eye:

_All students in the Community Service Worker program will also be required to do an eight month internship with the Pawnee municipal government._

A slow smirk spreads across her face. Sure mom - she'll go to work. But it'll be unpaid work, so forget about that rent. Plus you'll need to pay tuition. But hey - she'll be _doing something_.

And if it sucks for her, at least she can make it suck for everyone else as well.

 

_All Grown Up_

 

April Ludgate-Dwyer rolls over and marvels again at the man lying beside her in bed. She knows that in high school Andy would have probably been a dumb jock - so dumb and so jockish that most people wouldn't have even thought that guys like him could exist outside of stupid coming-of-age comedies. And sure, there's still some of that there. But he's also twisted and fun and hot and just as happy to cuddle up with her under a blanket and plot out how various Disney princesses might horribly die as he was to be tied to the bed while she showed off _all_ her old 'Naughty Nun' outfits. Somehow, out of all the dumb high school jocks, she's managed to end up married to the only one who's actually awesome.

She'd love to stay in bed with Andy all day, but she's got a meeting. A couple of years ago, that wouldn't have mattered at all, but she's got the only job at Pawnee City Hall that isn't totally horrible; running the animal control sub-department is decent work. 

Champion comes running (well, limping) over once he notices that she's awake, and April scratches him behind an ear as she remembers that she wants to make November Adopt-a-Special-Needs-Pet month.

She'll send out a memo about that after she's finished meeting with her (though she'll never admit it out loud) best friend, the only bubbly blonde in the world who doesn't make her want to retch. At least not too often, anyway. Then she'll summarize the meeting for the father figure she never wanted and now can't imagine being without, since he's way too cool to come to meetings.

She's distracted by the day ahead, and manages to stub her toe pretty badly on her way to the toilet. She screams and swears a blue streak as she hops around the room, eventually falling onto the bed and on top of Andy.

Ow. Fuck, her life sucks!

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't planning to pick up a pinch hit, but all your amazing April-centric prompts made this one irresistible! I hope you enjoy this, implicated2.


End file.
